…almost 350,000 people voted in Tuesday’s recall elections — and Republicans won 53 percent of the total vote. After blowtorching the state with negative ads and benefiting from a favorable timetable, the unions could still only get 47 percent of Wisconsinites to support their effort.
This should make the unions think long and hard about whether they want to embark on a mission to recall Gov. Scott Walker next year. Doing so successfully would easily cost them five times as much as they just spent — and even with their recent deluge of cash, most of the public still didn’t support them at the polls. Additionally, the extra time will also give Walker’s reforms more time to work — and once the public sees that schools can manage their affairs effectively without being hamstrung by union regulations, organized labor’s argument gets even weaker.
That’s a) in an off-year election where union turnout usually makes the difference b) in famously progressive Wisconsin c) after spending many millions d) with a nationwide media and organizing push e) when labor had a galvanizing issue in Gov. Scott Walker’s direct assault on the institutional collective bargaining power of public employees, which led to a dramatic walkout by Democrats.
They’re slow learners. Though when it comes to one of the unions, they’re slow teachers as well.
CC. To what extent did you feel like you were standing alone in resisting the man-made climate change theory back in the 1990s?
“It was difficult. I knew that many of my colleagues at the Association of State Climatologists agreed with me. But many of them wouldn’t say anything because they were worried about losing their jobs or just plain having their professional lives made difficult. Frankly there’s a lot more money supporting the other side. Things would be easier if you just go along with them.”
CC. “You’d say that now there’s a lot more money supporting the man-made climate change side of the issue than there is on the side of the skeptics?
“Oh yes, it’s been that way for a long time.”
Yes, though you’d never hear it above the din of the screams about oil money.
The abysmal results of President Downgrade’s latest campaign speech. Of course, apologists will say that it would have dropped a thousand points if he hadn’t given the speech. Aren’t counterfactuals fun?
It’s what inevitably happens when Democrats run a place long enough. And unfortunately, it’s a microcosm of the state itself (and the country at large if we don’t vote out more of the leeches next year).
